A Review on Cultivation History, Genetic Resources, Selection of Cultivars and Improvement of Tree and Fruit Characteristics of Quince (Cydonia oblonga Mill.) in Iran

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Associate Professor, Temperate Fruits Research Center, Horticultural Sciences Research Institute, Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization, Karaj, Iran.

Abstract

The origin of the quince tree (Cydonia oblonga Mill.) is the regions between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, and it continues to Talash and part of Guilan and Ardabil provinces in Iran. Thus, several centers of diversity of this species, including the center of diversity of the Iranian plateau, have been formed around its center of origin during 4000 years since the beginning of the cultivation of this tree. Due to the existence of very wide and rich germplasm of the quince tree, the country of Iran is one of the major and important countries in production of this fruit in the world, and due to the public acceptance and its medicinal properties, the cultivation of this tree and its commercially released cultivars is increasing. Considering the wide and rich germplasm of quince tree in different regions of Iran, different collection programs and selection of genotypes have been carried out, and superior cultivars such as cv. Isfahan, cv. Viduja and cv. Behta were selected and commercially released during the recent decades. Local and native cultivars, which had less commercial values, have been gradually eliminated. The most important aims of quince tree breeding program in the last two decades has been focused on breeding for resistance to fire blight disease, selecting dwarf and spur bearing habit genotypes, selection for tolerance to iron chlorosis and resistance to crown rot, identification and selection of self-compatible cultiavrs and selection of best pollinizer cultiavrs, breeding for storage and fruit quality, selecting superior cultivars for secondary metabolites and especially phenolics, and finally starting hybridization programs with the aim of developing cultivars with spur-type bearing habit with the superior fruit quality. In this review article, the progresses and and a reviewe of numerous research programs carried out over several decades in Iran, have been considerd and presented.
 
Keywords: Quince, center of origin, center of diversity, fire blight disease, growth habit, self-compatability.
The quince tree (Cydonia oblonga Mill.), after apples and pears, has been cultivated as the third pome fruit tree in Iran and some countries of the world (Bell and Leitão, 2011). The center of origin of the quince tree is the region between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, and this center of origin also covers the southern parts, such as Talash region, of Guilan province in Iran (Abdollahi, 2024). It seems that during thousands of years of expansion of early civilizations from Iran, Mesopotamia and Syria, early and superior types of quince trees were selected and gradually developed to more distant areas. The establishment of early civilizations in the peripheral areas of the Iranian plateau covered various genetic reserves of several fruit trees and the initial point of attention of early civilizations was the use of quince fruits, for food consumption about 4000 BC and even earlier before. The development and cultivation of superior types of quince trees in the ancient period was based on the use of seeds, which due to the relative self-compatiblity of the quince tree in some genotypes, the high homozygosity has been caused the extension of seedling trees with superior fruit quality compared to other pome fruit trees such as apples and pears.
Based on the documents, cultivation of native cultivars and local genotypes of quince tree continued until the first decades of the 14th century in the various regions of Iran (Darvishian, 1985). Darvishian (1985) in his surveys on the native quince cultivars of various region of Iran, mentioned to several cultivars including, cv. Isfahan, cv. Shams and cv. Kharv Neishabour, that seems these cultivars have been among the oldest native quince cultivars of Iran. Darvishian (1985) named three cultivars of Gorton Isfahan, Kharv Neishabur and Shams as the first selected and certified commercial quince cultivars in Iran. Until then, no action was taken to collect and import quince cultivars, until the first clonal rootstocks of this tree including quince A, B, C, BA29 and Adams were introduced and were preliminary evaluated (Abdolahi, 2024). This collection can be introduced as the first valid collection of quince tree in Iran, which was established in the Kamalshahr Horticultural Research Station in Karaj. In the next studies quince germplasm from different regions from Isfahan, Guilan, Ardabil, Tehran, Khorasan were collected and evaluated for various charachteristics and resistances (Razavi et al., 1999; Abdollahi et al., 2013).
The most important aims of quince breeding program in the last two decades have been breeding for resistance to fire blight disease, breeding for selecting dwarf spur bearing habit, selection for tolerance to iron chlorosis and resistance to crown rot, identification and selection of self-compatible cultiavrs and selection of best pollinizer cultiavrs, breeding for storage and fruit quality, selecting superior cultivars in terms of secondary metabolites and especially phenolics, and finally starting hybridization programs with the aim of producing cultivars with spur-type bearing habit with the superior fruit quality.The researches conducted on different aspects of quince tree breeding, until now, have led to selction and commercially release of cv. Viduja with dwarf growth habit and high spur bearing habit, which is higher yieldind compared to the cv. Isfahan, as well as the cv. Behta with high fruit quality and greater spur production. In the orchard evaluations for fire blight resistance, cv. Viduja has demonstrated higher disease resistance and high yield potential. This cultivar also has been used in hybridization program for obtaining dwarf, high bearing quince cultivars.
In addition to cv. Viduja and cv. Behta and other promising genotypes that have been introduced from Isfahan province, four genotypes have also been selected from the northwest of the Iran, including; Givi, AD1, ASH and AS1, which are being evaluated as promising genotypes. Cultivar Behta in both orchard and greenhouse evaluations has demonstrated acceptable levels of resistance to crown rots. In self-incompatiblity evaluations, S1, S4 and S5 alleles from self incompatibility locus were sequenced and deposited in data bank, also both self-compatible and self-incompatible quince cultivars and genotypes were reported in quince genotypes of Iran. The evaluation of the total antioxidant capacity of leaves and fruits of quince cultivars and genotypes from different regions of Iran showed that some of the promising genotypes of Isfahan province are the best sources of secondary metabolites and have the highest total antioxidant capacity.
All of the above mentioned quinces breeding objectives should be continued in more comprehensive research and breeding programs including the survey and complementary collection of germplasm, intra/inter specific hybridization programs, as well as the use of hawthorn (Crataegus spp.) rootstocks for dwarfing, drought and salinity tolerance.
 
References
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Keywords


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